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Tag: boarding schools

“I hope I never get used to the kind of artfully suppressed pain he faintly displayed as he told me of how he had had to leave home at eight because his family would not have been able to manage; that spooked, haunted look you catch right at the back of the eyes of so many ex-boarders which seems to simultaneously say ‘please give me a cuddle’ and ‘please don’t ever give me a cuddle'”

So it’s happening. I was always worried it might. That if we find it acceptable for people to send their children away, there would come a time when they would start making other people send their children away. If we say “its all about choice” then a time would come when there was no choice […]

“Is this a pain?” texts newspaper man. “No! its not a pain!” I reply, aware that my texts have been increasing in abruptness, not because ‘it’s a pain’ but because I am standing in the booze department of a German supermarket trying to decide whether to spend five euros on a bottle of wine which […]

I keep meaning to write up my Frequently Asked Questions, but I never quite get round to finishing it. And there are always new questions being frequently asked. A very popular old chestnut however is “are you opposed to all private education?” and the answer of course is yes, yes I certainly am. It’s just […]

In the late nineteen sixties a team of sociologists lead by Royston Lambert conducted an in-depth study into boarding schools. They conducted interviews, gave out questionnaires and were shown countless diaries and personal writings, entirely voluntarily on the part of the pupils. They published an in-depth analysis of their findings, but they also published The Hothouse Society, […]

Last weekend I attended a conference about boarding schools. This meant that I went into a big room with about a hundred ex-boarding school kids and me. I stood out because I was wearing too much lipstick and, being from a northern comprehensive, my chip on the opposite shoulder to everyone else. I also spent […]